A Bit of Earth by Rebecca Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

funding.’
    â€˜Oh, good. Well done. And where was it you were going?’
    â€˜Here. I’m staying here.’
    â€˜You are? Oh, that’s excellent. I thought you would have wanted to go somewhere else, Cambridge, the States …’ He seemed to have forgotten that he had helped her with the application. ‘Are you sure you want to stay here? It is a bit of a backwater in some ways.’
    â€˜I like it here. Lots of freedom. No interference.’ She looked around at the garden.
    â€˜Good. Well, come and see me and we can talk about getting started. I have to go and collect my son. My watch is lost at the moment. You don’t have the time, do you? I’m not sure if the clock I’ve got is very accurate.’
    â€˜Five to three.’
    â€˜I have to go. I’m late. I have to collect my son.’
    She nodded.
    She watched him go, up the zigzag path and towards the secret gate.
    Before the accident Guy had made occasional forays to the shops if something had been forgotten or was needed last minute, especially when Felix was a baby. But he had left most of the shopping to Susannah. Now he wondered if maybe she had been bored out of her skull. All this constant needing of things. Surely it should be the case that you did things once, and then they didn’t need doing again?
    Not so, it seemed. Now that he had reached a point of thinking, at least a little, about what he was doing, rather than just crawling through the fog each day, he decided totry to make his housekeeping as streamlined as possible. Really, the shops were full of things that nobody could possibly need. He would just zip round. He couldn’t decide which was worse though, wasting precious work time whilst Felix was at school, or going with Felix in tow. Yes, he would zip round. This was what he resolved. Every time.
    Somehow he would find himself snarled up in the Homewares section, staring at plastic racks to go on draining boards or DVD players for £39.99. Move on! Speed up! he told himself. If Felix was with him they would then get snagged at some unseasonal display of seasonal geegaws. It would take them half an hour even to make it as far as the fruit and veg.
    Then one day Felix said, ‘Dad, why don’t I have slippers any more? They have slippers here. Only £4.99.’ And they were sunk.
    He couldn’t remember what size Felix’s feet were. When Felix took off his shoes the insides were so worn that no number was visible. None of the slippers seemed to fit anyway. In the end they gave up.
    â€˜Felix. We’ll have to go to a proper shoe shop and get your feet measured.’
    â€˜OK, Dad.’ Felix looked longingly at the slippers, their bright, brushed-nylon colours and motifs of animals and cartoon characters. He would have loved some of the frog ones.
    A week or so later they would get a pair of the most boring shoes in the history of the world and some brown checked slippers like the ones old men had on TV. These slippers would dwell for all eternity unworn under Felix’s bed. He would never ask for slippers again.
    Distractions like the slippers came up every week. It was no wonder that they ended up hardly buying any food, and often they would get home and Guy wouldn’t be able to think of anything much for tea.
    There had been another time when Felix had said that Marmalade had been stolen out of the trolley. They had spent twenty-five minutes queuing at Customer Services to fill out a form, and then been too tired to do much shopping. When they got back (without eggs, milk or Cheerios), Marmalade had mysteriously magicked himself back home and was sitting on the stairs.
    They would often meet people Felix knew from school who said hello to them; at least the parents said hello. The children seemed to have a policy of not even acknowledging each other’s existence, although when he quizzed Felix later it would emerge that this was some child he sat next